Language Changes And Language Change

Language changes, as do all things in the living world, as language reflects and affects the society which uses it. The mechanics of language change show language as a system with larger and larger scale trends, which allows us to examine the conditions necessary for change.

The process of change occurs gradually, and the rate of this change does conform to a pattern. For instance, if you get an influx of foreign words, few people use them, and they spread slowly until people have become familiar with them. When they have, the word usage stabilizes.

Another factor affecting language change is hyper-correction. This occurs when a sentence is corrected so frequently that the deviant form becomes the norm in spoken English. For example, the sentence Jill and me went to…show more content…Elimination is another example of a reason why language changes, as sometimes lexical terms are eliminated when the words come into disuse. An example of this is the Shakespearian word behoves (from Hamlet) which means 'as is fitting for '. This is still used, but not frequently.

There are many different attitudes to language change, many of these are negative and are voiced via the press and other media outlets. Many believe that borrowings have contaminated the English language.

The anti-racist and anti-sexist movements have strong views about the English language and how it affects the deeper feelings of an individual. This has caused many changes, for example, chairman has until now been used as a common noun by many people, but due to the campaigners this term has been replaced by chairperson or just chair to eliminate the potentially sexist meaning of the original word. This is a conscious lexical change and illustrates how words are thought to be capable of affecting the ideas and attitudes of

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